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December 2, 2017
This is one of the worst, most embarassing books I have read in any genre, and boy have I read thousands. And this will certainly be the most negative review I will have so far written here in Goodreads. I will try my best, even though it now seems an impossible task to truly encapsulate in written words how terrible this book was. Of course, I will not do this out of any spite for the author or even the deeper foundations of her beliefs in writing this book, despite how much I vehemently disagree with them. I only want to offer a review about the book itself, how really, really, really bad it is, how it shamefully appropriates and copy-pastes excerpts and bits and pieces of various cultural and philosophical bakgrounds and then presents them as novel thoughts without truly understanding them, and how it underliningly promotes a detachment from life itself in the name of some nonsensical gibberish - something that may sound harmless given the book's framework, but is actually (i) extremely dangerous within today's troubling societal, political, human-rights and environmental issues, and also (ii) detrimental for both the individuals and the societal structures they find themselves in, if of course such individuals are privileged enough to even consider following such appropriated, West-washed "teachings" as the ones found in this book. But let's get this over with.
I myself absolutely reject any metaphysical, religious, magical, and gnostic stuff. Absolutely and completely (knowing, however, that there still may be such residues in my thought and worldview, due to my upbringing, my still not-entirely-clear opinion about many matters which may never get completely clear at all, etc.). And, maybe because of that, I have read a ton of writings regarding them. I may reject them, but I respect them. I respect the historical, cultural and anthopological framework in which they may have been shaped and then shaped themselves in return, I respect the trails of thought that led to them, and I respect the decades, centuries, and millenia of psychological, intellectual and emotional labor that may have been put into them. They may be becoming (or already are) obsolete, but that's okay - studying and comprehending is the key. Even if someone rejects such stuff, they may find elements - of course after serious and no-nonsense studying - that can compliment their worldview. Marxists can benefit in their historical materialistic analysis if they actually study about metaphysics and idealism, from Plato to Hegel (and not just entrench themselves behind the whole "Marx and Engels used Hegel's tools, so I already know what's going on" stuff); evolutionary biologists can benefit if they study Native American animism, because such worldview has indeed altered the balance and biodiversity in the areas where such people have lived; historians can benefit if they read about magic; mathematicians can benefit if they read about the Jesuits. I am not talking, of course, about substituting science, anthropology, political theory, biology, physics, mathematics, and history; quite the opposite, actually - I am talking about complementing them, albeit in a critical and strenuous way.
This respect, this comprehension, and this complimentarity were exactly absolutely absent from this book.
This book was an assortment of Mayan, Eastern-Asian, Buddhist, and Zoroastrianist bits and pieces (that I managed to identify in this trainwreck), together with some idealistic and esoteric basics and gnostic stuff, such as the concept of monad. By God, it was an utter mess. Concepts came and go, Eastern practices were West-washed and appropriated without being in the slightest comprehended, without proper illumination as to where they came from and what they meant in their framework of origin, or what they mean in the current framework in which they are presented, and what they will mean in the future, oh please, make it stop. Panthea and concepts of different religious origins were mixed and blended incogruously. Again, mixing and blending is not bad and complimentarity is amazing - but here, there was no complimentarity and absolutely no research methodology, which is especially critical in bodies of work concerned with the intellect and the psyche.
The gnostic stuff was a particular disaster. The concept of monad as presented here had taken none of the similarities and all of the contradictions about its definition from the Pythagoreans, from Leibniz, and from the apophatics, but without dialectics and without any effort of synthesizing them. Of course there was absolutely no respective reference within the text; I seriously doubt if the author has studied anything of such stuff in the first place, and I wonder if she just put in indiscriminately stuff that may have caught her ear or she may have read absent-mindedly on a Sunday morning. (Again, I don't want to digress and start attacking the author or even her school of thought, just the book itself - but the book is so freaking awful, and given the knowledge that it is the product of "studying" and the culmination of the "philosophical teachings" of the international organization New Acropolis, as is written in the book's prologue, one can only wonder about the quality of such "studying" and "philosophy".) Sentences came and went without progression, put out in "easily digestible" phrases in the hopes that the reader won't understand the difference, making it absolutely insulting to the reader's intelligence, especially if they have actually and respectfully studied about such stuff - and dangerous for someone for whom this book may be the first or one of the first entry points in such ways of thought.
"Philosophy" was also severely abused. Let me tell you about philosophy. Philosophy is not a term to be used lightly. Philosophy is not sprouting out whatever comes to one's mind. Even in schools of thought that one doesn't agree with, there is usually (and hopefully) a certain framework. There is research. There is methodology. There is painstaking intellectual labor. There is a science of logic, a science of reason, and a science of gnosis. None of them existed in this book. Its metaphysics was a joke and could be destroyed a hundred times over by any learned transcedentalist. The book's title is translated in English as "The games of Maya", and its subtitle as "Philosophical essays about the fallaciousness of the world." IT IS AN AFFRONT TO CALL THIS ASSORTMENT OF NONSENSICAL PARAGRAPHS AS "PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS". Philosophy is not just sitting, sipping coffee and thinking tangentially about stuff - although great philosophy can also come out of sitting, sipping coffee and thinking tangentially about stuff. But is is of the utmost importance that through this and any other process comes deeper understanding, comprehending, and reasoning, and not just stupendous stuff on a scrap of paper.
Finally, not because there is an end to the garbage of this book, but because there is an end to my time and patience to write this review, there is a profound and shamefull disregard of any scientific fact. Complimentarity, remember? Well, none of it here. Trees are upstanding in stature because they "want" to look like humans?! Matter is expanded when heated, not because of the material properties itself, but because it "feeds off the thermal nourishment"?! Sentiments are a property of the wind?! What?! In wild nature, carnivore animals don't eat the newborns of other species because they want to preserve the "young life"?! Seriously?! Has the author ever heard of lions, tigers, crocodiles, snakes, wasps, spiders, and virtually every other of the hundreds of millions of carnivore species of every animal group (mammals, reptiles, insects etc.) that, given the circumstances (and more often than not) devour the younglings of the species they feed on, exactly because it's easy prey? Or does she have in mind only exceptional cases (or ones in controlled environment) when e.g. dogs adopt tiger cubs? WHAT IS THIS?! The anthropomorphisms have no end, and they are so badly written that they lose any symbolic sense in the first place - if there was any symbolic intention at all, since I believe that the book actually promotes that metals and rocks think for themselves (actually existent in the book). We must never, ever forget, that even the "rocks think for themselves" stuff, shamelessly taken in the book from animistic cosmology without any hint of comprehension, was soundly founded within the cultural, historical, and epistemological circumstances of the people creating it. Rocks thinking for themselves was something meaningful and important for Native American and central African religions. Astrology was something meaningful and important for zoroastrian Persians. They made it meaningful because they created and comprehended it deeply, and also because it was founded complimentarily in whatever levels of scientific knowledge they had come to possess (e.g. astrology and astronomy were interconnected for many centuries). Thus they came to form a complimentary whole. This whole may have been surpassed or not, but that's okay, because people progress (and retrogress as well, but that's another conversation). In order for us to form a new whole, we must assimilate this complimentarity as well, and this cannot be done by disregarding scientific facts. One can believe in the soul and the psychie, one can can ascertain elements about ethics and whatnot in metaphysis, but one cannot be a creationist, cannot believe that by drawing this or that rune they will change the material properties of an object, and cannot say that when the Sun sets, it is because Maya wants us to simulate the experience of death. Evolution is real, drawing stuff doesn't transmute matter from water to metal, and the Sun sets in some part of the world due to the movement of the Earth around it and around its own axis. We can *assign* symbolic, esoteric, and magical meaning to all this, and that's absolutely fine, if through this assignment we arrive to some deeper understanding about matters we are concerned with - I wouldn't do it, but I can respect people that do it. But one should have the honesty and responsibility to understand that this is an *assignment*. This book clearly does not. And it's a shame, because by studying just a little about e.g. particle physics, biology, mathematics etc. (I'm not talking about fancy equation stuff, there is a ton of popular science books out there that are simple, comprehensible and in layman's terms, without insulting the reader's intelligence), one can find such uncountably beautiful, mind-boggling and amazing stuff about the world, nature, the universe and whatnot, that even if it doesn't make them shy away from non-scientific stuff (this is not the intention in the first place), it can just as beautifully work complimetarily with their esoteric studies - something propagated even, and I would say primarily, by most serious spititual teachers and advocates of such studies. Complimentarity, complimentarity. It keeps coming back, maybe because of its uttel absence in this dustbin of a book.
And when, in latter chapters, the book is concerned with more abstract stuff such as society, ethics, politics, work, beauty, please, I can't do this anymore. I stop here, without even getting to the most technical stuff I usually leave for the end of my reviews (the prose was boring and nonsensical; the chapters referenced one another, albeit in no robust manner; no research methodology; no references; bogus language; etc.).
After a certain point, I almost had fun hatereading it, all of its 160-something pages. But were it not for my personal vice that I have to finish every book I get to start, I would have left it after the first twenty pages. Stay away from this book. What I've writtten here doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of its frustrating nonsense. I know that some, after reading my bitterly negative review, may indeed read the book out of curiosity. Be my guests, but I know that you'll only manage to lose your precious time. It is shameful, embarassing, disrespectful to its contextual origins (whichever they may be), and insulting to the reader. Its naivety doesn't make it "simple to the reader, in order to comprehend the joys of life", as noted in the book itself. I'd say quite the opposite. Life can be a mess and people strive to make something out of it, to find a meaning, purpose, beauty, love, anything - at least those lucky or privileged enough to not have to be worried about their imminent survival. Books such as this do not help people, or at least do not help them as much as other books could, but only serve to mess up even more their lives by introducing deliberately nonsensical stuff - again, not because they may be metaphysical, magical, esoteric, or gnostic. I may reject them but others may not and through them be definitely much better people than I am; but because they muddle, appropriate, liquefy, de-robustify, and de-contextify the true essence and meaning of the respective metaphysics, gnostics etc. Stay the hell away from this book, or use it as a coffee coaster. And speaking of warm beverages, I hope that you have a large cup of cocoa and marshmallows today.
I myself absolutely reject any metaphysical, religious, magical, and gnostic stuff. Absolutely and completely (knowing, however, that there still may be such residues in my thought and worldview, due to my upbringing, my still not-entirely-clear opinion about many matters which may never get completely clear at all, etc.). And, maybe because of that, I have read a ton of writings regarding them. I may reject them, but I respect them. I respect the historical, cultural and anthopological framework in which they may have been shaped and then shaped themselves in return, I respect the trails of thought that led to them, and I respect the decades, centuries, and millenia of psychological, intellectual and emotional labor that may have been put into them. They may be becoming (or already are) obsolete, but that's okay - studying and comprehending is the key. Even if someone rejects such stuff, they may find elements - of course after serious and no-nonsense studying - that can compliment their worldview. Marxists can benefit in their historical materialistic analysis if they actually study about metaphysics and idealism, from Plato to Hegel (and not just entrench themselves behind the whole "Marx and Engels used Hegel's tools, so I already know what's going on" stuff); evolutionary biologists can benefit if they study Native American animism, because such worldview has indeed altered the balance and biodiversity in the areas where such people have lived; historians can benefit if they read about magic; mathematicians can benefit if they read about the Jesuits. I am not talking, of course, about substituting science, anthropology, political theory, biology, physics, mathematics, and history; quite the opposite, actually - I am talking about complementing them, albeit in a critical and strenuous way.
This respect, this comprehension, and this complimentarity were exactly absolutely absent from this book.
This book was an assortment of Mayan, Eastern-Asian, Buddhist, and Zoroastrianist bits and pieces (that I managed to identify in this trainwreck), together with some idealistic and esoteric basics and gnostic stuff, such as the concept of monad. By God, it was an utter mess. Concepts came and go, Eastern practices were West-washed and appropriated without being in the slightest comprehended, without proper illumination as to where they came from and what they meant in their framework of origin, or what they mean in the current framework in which they are presented, and what they will mean in the future, oh please, make it stop. Panthea and concepts of different religious origins were mixed and blended incogruously. Again, mixing and blending is not bad and complimentarity is amazing - but here, there was no complimentarity and absolutely no research methodology, which is especially critical in bodies of work concerned with the intellect and the psyche.
The gnostic stuff was a particular disaster. The concept of monad as presented here had taken none of the similarities and all of the contradictions about its definition from the Pythagoreans, from Leibniz, and from the apophatics, but without dialectics and without any effort of synthesizing them. Of course there was absolutely no respective reference within the text; I seriously doubt if the author has studied anything of such stuff in the first place, and I wonder if she just put in indiscriminately stuff that may have caught her ear or she may have read absent-mindedly on a Sunday morning. (Again, I don't want to digress and start attacking the author or even her school of thought, just the book itself - but the book is so freaking awful, and given the knowledge that it is the product of "studying" and the culmination of the "philosophical teachings" of the international organization New Acropolis, as is written in the book's prologue, one can only wonder about the quality of such "studying" and "philosophy".) Sentences came and went without progression, put out in "easily digestible" phrases in the hopes that the reader won't understand the difference, making it absolutely insulting to the reader's intelligence, especially if they have actually and respectfully studied about such stuff - and dangerous for someone for whom this book may be the first or one of the first entry points in such ways of thought.
"Philosophy" was also severely abused. Let me tell you about philosophy. Philosophy is not a term to be used lightly. Philosophy is not sprouting out whatever comes to one's mind. Even in schools of thought that one doesn't agree with, there is usually (and hopefully) a certain framework. There is research. There is methodology. There is painstaking intellectual labor. There is a science of logic, a science of reason, and a science of gnosis. None of them existed in this book. Its metaphysics was a joke and could be destroyed a hundred times over by any learned transcedentalist. The book's title is translated in English as "The games of Maya", and its subtitle as "Philosophical essays about the fallaciousness of the world." IT IS AN AFFRONT TO CALL THIS ASSORTMENT OF NONSENSICAL PARAGRAPHS AS "PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS". Philosophy is not just sitting, sipping coffee and thinking tangentially about stuff - although great philosophy can also come out of sitting, sipping coffee and thinking tangentially about stuff. But is is of the utmost importance that through this and any other process comes deeper understanding, comprehending, and reasoning, and not just stupendous stuff on a scrap of paper.
Finally, not because there is an end to the garbage of this book, but because there is an end to my time and patience to write this review, there is a profound and shamefull disregard of any scientific fact. Complimentarity, remember? Well, none of it here. Trees are upstanding in stature because they "want" to look like humans?! Matter is expanded when heated, not because of the material properties itself, but because it "feeds off the thermal nourishment"?! Sentiments are a property of the wind?! What?! In wild nature, carnivore animals don't eat the newborns of other species because they want to preserve the "young life"?! Seriously?! Has the author ever heard of lions, tigers, crocodiles, snakes, wasps, spiders, and virtually every other of the hundreds of millions of carnivore species of every animal group (mammals, reptiles, insects etc.) that, given the circumstances (and more often than not) devour the younglings of the species they feed on, exactly because it's easy prey? Or does she have in mind only exceptional cases (or ones in controlled environment) when e.g. dogs adopt tiger cubs? WHAT IS THIS?! The anthropomorphisms have no end, and they are so badly written that they lose any symbolic sense in the first place - if there was any symbolic intention at all, since I believe that the book actually promotes that metals and rocks think for themselves (actually existent in the book). We must never, ever forget, that even the "rocks think for themselves" stuff, shamelessly taken in the book from animistic cosmology without any hint of comprehension, was soundly founded within the cultural, historical, and epistemological circumstances of the people creating it. Rocks thinking for themselves was something meaningful and important for Native American and central African religions. Astrology was something meaningful and important for zoroastrian Persians. They made it meaningful because they created and comprehended it deeply, and also because it was founded complimentarily in whatever levels of scientific knowledge they had come to possess (e.g. astrology and astronomy were interconnected for many centuries). Thus they came to form a complimentary whole. This whole may have been surpassed or not, but that's okay, because people progress (and retrogress as well, but that's another conversation). In order for us to form a new whole, we must assimilate this complimentarity as well, and this cannot be done by disregarding scientific facts. One can believe in the soul and the psychie, one can can ascertain elements about ethics and whatnot in metaphysis, but one cannot be a creationist, cannot believe that by drawing this or that rune they will change the material properties of an object, and cannot say that when the Sun sets, it is because Maya wants us to simulate the experience of death. Evolution is real, drawing stuff doesn't transmute matter from water to metal, and the Sun sets in some part of the world due to the movement of the Earth around it and around its own axis. We can *assign* symbolic, esoteric, and magical meaning to all this, and that's absolutely fine, if through this assignment we arrive to some deeper understanding about matters we are concerned with - I wouldn't do it, but I can respect people that do it. But one should have the honesty and responsibility to understand that this is an *assignment*. This book clearly does not. And it's a shame, because by studying just a little about e.g. particle physics, biology, mathematics etc. (I'm not talking about fancy equation stuff, there is a ton of popular science books out there that are simple, comprehensible and in layman's terms, without insulting the reader's intelligence), one can find such uncountably beautiful, mind-boggling and amazing stuff about the world, nature, the universe and whatnot, that even if it doesn't make them shy away from non-scientific stuff (this is not the intention in the first place), it can just as beautifully work complimetarily with their esoteric studies - something propagated even, and I would say primarily, by most serious spititual teachers and advocates of such studies. Complimentarity, complimentarity. It keeps coming back, maybe because of its uttel absence in this dustbin of a book.
And when, in latter chapters, the book is concerned with more abstract stuff such as society, ethics, politics, work, beauty, please, I can't do this anymore. I stop here, without even getting to the most technical stuff I usually leave for the end of my reviews (the prose was boring and nonsensical; the chapters referenced one another, albeit in no robust manner; no research methodology; no references; bogus language; etc.).
After a certain point, I almost had fun hatereading it, all of its 160-something pages. But were it not for my personal vice that I have to finish every book I get to start, I would have left it after the first twenty pages. Stay away from this book. What I've writtten here doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of its frustrating nonsense. I know that some, after reading my bitterly negative review, may indeed read the book out of curiosity. Be my guests, but I know that you'll only manage to lose your precious time. It is shameful, embarassing, disrespectful to its contextual origins (whichever they may be), and insulting to the reader. Its naivety doesn't make it "simple to the reader, in order to comprehend the joys of life", as noted in the book itself. I'd say quite the opposite. Life can be a mess and people strive to make something out of it, to find a meaning, purpose, beauty, love, anything - at least those lucky or privileged enough to not have to be worried about their imminent survival. Books such as this do not help people, or at least do not help them as much as other books could, but only serve to mess up even more their lives by introducing deliberately nonsensical stuff - again, not because they may be metaphysical, magical, esoteric, or gnostic. I may reject them but others may not and through them be definitely much better people than I am; but because they muddle, appropriate, liquefy, de-robustify, and de-contextify the true essence and meaning of the respective metaphysics, gnostics etc. Stay the hell away from this book, or use it as a coffee coaster. And speaking of warm beverages, I hope that you have a large cup of cocoa and marshmallows today.
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